CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ Thirty-Five

“Stand… down?” Brie turned and slowly met his eyes. “Nacho, what are you doing?”

“Brie.” Nacho stared intently into her horrified face. “We lost. They out-level and out-Tier us. We don’t want to risk Taye, and they’re going to win one way or another. We’ll back up, and… try to run.”

He was communicating with her with all of his might. They’d known each other for a long time—they were best friends. Abyss it all, after everything they had been through, she should be able to read his mind.

“Nacho’s right.” Reuben approached and drew her back, giving her a huge wink when his face was turned away from their opponents. “Come on; he knows what he’s doing.”

Battalion barked out a derisive laugh. “Charlie, come over here and take over. Kick the Archer every now and again so the system can’t mess with us by dropping combat. You up for that?”

Charlie—the previously unnamed Healer—crept forward and gave Taye a tentative kick, looking guilty as all get-out, but it was enough.

“Keep an eye on them.” Crave tapped the Ivory Talon against his thigh and pointed his cane at them. “I accept your surrender, Doritos. I’ll tell you now, I know you’re playing games, but we’ll be ready if you don’t follow through. Make no mistake, we will annihilate you.”

Red Suzy kept her bow ready, a bloodstained arrow nocked, one she’d fired and collected from someone’s corpse. Rizzo had disappeared, and Nacho knew he could be anywhere in the room. Battalion stood as eye-catchingly as possible with his huge mace on his shoulder. “Don't worry, boss. I’ll keep an eye on ‘em. Get the weapon, so there’s no way they can fight back.”

Crave swiveled on a heel and entered the Earthling-statue Archer hall like he owned it. He paused. “There’s the message from the System. Look at that: I’ll be getting the bonus for bringing so many ‘friends’. Love that they're counting you in the equation. I’m pretty sure the Patrons are pleased that I’m the one who’s completing this quest.”

The Guild Master walked up to the door, cackling as he turned the circles until the top symbol was a cloak, the middle circle was a feather, and the bottom circle was a sword.

He had chosen an Assassin’s symbols, perfectly aligned for him to walk away with the prize.

“See? My Patron said he wasn’t sure if things would line up for me, but it’s pretty abyssal clear that I was destined to open this door and claim the Dragon Spear. It’s finally time for Richard Johnson Crave to shine! Final Victory is officially the most powerful guild! This is me winning, Doritos… this is me winning.”

Crave tried to turn the claw to the left, frowning as nothing happened. “Huh. Locks always open counter-clockwise…?”

Battalion threw a look over his shoulder. “Charlie, kick the guy again.”

The enemy Healer awkwardly slammed his foot into Taye even as he winced. “Sorry, kid.”

“You know what I always say… something that goes double for deadly doors in the middle of a dungeon…” Nacho took a step back, a quick hand motion pushing Brie and Reuben to do the same as they glanced at him with a question in their eyes. A cryptic smile started to spread across his lips.

Crave cranked it to the right, “Let’s try that again. Me… winning!”

Every statue let loose their arrows. None of the bolts had fletching like normal arrows; no, they’d been altered when Nacho had first entered the room, right after the Patrons referenced his Satiation Player class in their cryptic message. Those statues—everything from the elementary school girl in braids, to the old man with his pants pulled up above his waist, to the severe woman with her hair in a hard bun—unleashed their missiles. As soon as the projectiles were airborne, they shifted from stone to metal.

Nacho watched everything happen, exactly as he had expected. The statues weren’t firing arrows. They were firing shish-kabob skewers. The metal brochettes flashed through the air, finding Battalion first and piercing his armor. He went from tank to hedgehog before the Ivory Talon had even finished turning, before anyone else even had time to notice that there was an issue.

Red Suzy Blacke was impaled from every direction, and one skewer hit her bowstring, releasing an arrow that flashed off to join the shish-kabob barrage.

Rizzo fell out of a shadow, filled with metal shafts.

Crave remained standing for a long few seconds, but ever so slowly slipped to his knees. His armor might as well have been cardboard, and he had taken the brunt of the skewers. Inch by slumping inch, the pincushioned Assassin fell face-first into the door.

“Practice makes better.” Nacho finally finished his thought, nodding grimly as the stench of death wafted over them. “I just figured I’d let someone else do the practicing this time around. Messing around with trapped puzzle doors was never my forte.”

The statues reloaded, pulling extra skewers out of the very ground. Stone cracked as the figures pulled their bows back, then everything went still. A heartbeat later, everything that had been stashed in the Storage Slots of the dead players appeared on the floor around them. In a flash, the most powerful members of the Final Victory were reduced to gore: nothing but loot drops surrounding too many bloody heaps.

Taye and Charlie the Healer had been under the archway, and to everyone’s great relief, both were unharmed.

“Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe… can’t…” the rival Healer dropped to his knees, then caught himself on his hands as he gasped for air that just wouldn’t come. He flopped to the stone floor, choking on nothing, and the group stared as he writhed around.

Brie frowned and reached out to poke him with her weapon. “Is this some kind of trick or trap?”

Reuben walked over and knelt next to Charlie. “It’s okay, guy. You’re okay; we’re not going to kill you unless you give us a reason to do it. We might kick you a bit, but that’s just for petty revenge.”

“Reuben!” Brie scolded him in a shocked tone.

“Just kidding.” Reuben glanced up and shrugged. “I think he’s having a panic attack. I don’t think he was cursed or anything. My first thought was that a curse had been placed on the entire guild to ensure that they would die if Crave died.”

Charlie nodded, though it wasn’t too obvious, thanks to his eyes rolling wildly in their sockets. “Panic. Attack. I’m also… I was… only one left alive?”

He went back to hyperventilating, and the noise was starting to annoy Nacho. The cook walked over, straddled the thrashing man’s chest, and gently choked him out, using his massive Fitness to ignore the weak attempts to slap him away. As soon as Charlie went limp, Nacho stood, let out a cheerful exhalation, then strode past his horrified teammates into the archer room.

“Sometimes I forget that you’re a little more… direct than we remember you to be.” Reuben chuckled nervously, his eyes on the now-unconscious man. “Then you go and do something like that, and it very clearly reminds me not to… I don’t know, pop out and shout ‘boo’ at you?”

Everyone that had stepped forward to peek into the room practically tripped over themselves to squeeze past the archway as Nacho strolled toward the door that had just killed a Tier two human without issue.

The cook barely took notice of the ‘Active Combat ended’ notice, and only paused when he heard Reuben cast Healing Hugs, causing their Archer to groan and sit up. Taye’s scratchy voice crossed the space, and Nacho let out a sigh of relief at the young man's words. “I feel terrible.”

“You gotta be alive to feel anything,” Brie commented, slapping him on the shoulder and pulling the teen to his feet. “Go rest over there for a few.”

Only a few of the Brunch Force managed to get on their feet. Abby and Kala had made it, as well as—miraculously—Eduardo. The cook had no idea how that had happened; the man had literally been cut in half. After giving it a moment’s thought, he could only shrug and say the words that went along with every other absolutely illogical thing that happened in this strange world. “Weird game logic.”

Hazel let out a strangled cry and scrambled to her fallen husband’s corpse. The heartbroken wife dropped to her knees next to Hank, and Nacho’s heart forced him to feel a terrible pang of sympathy. “Urgh… thought I had managed to get to the point where that kind of emotion died before it could impact me. Being in charge of people is making me soft again.”

Nacho glared at the golden puzzle door, pretty sure he knew how to open it. But… “Perhaps other things should come first.”

In a move that would have been completely uncharacteristic for his past life, he turned back and went to sit with Hazel, doing what he could to comfort her while his internal monologue called him an idiot for not taking the time to consolidate his power. Every survivor knelt around her. Well, all except for Kala, who began the sordid task of collecting her dead, only pausing over Myron’s body.

After staring at the lifeless form of her closest friend for a few moments, the Death Knight clenched her fists, walked to the archway, and spat into the room. “I’m glad you’re dead, Dick. I’m just sad I didn’t get to do it myself… Hey! Who here has fire magic? I want to burn that body until there’s not even dust that can be used to remember him!”

There was no answer. Everyone was grieving in their own way. Taye’s tears made tracks down through the dust on his face. Reuben was hugging anyone that needed a hug—healing or no—and Brie and Nacho were watching everyone else with a few feet between them.

Neither of them wanted to be caught up in a hug, no matter how many times Reuben gave them helpless glances.

Charlie was awake again, and he was healing, but he still looked pale. That only grew worse as he met Nacho’s gaze, and his mouth started opening and closing. He tried to speak several times, and even though it seemed that he could talk clearly again, Nacho wasn’t interested in what he had to say. “Before you start panicking again, let me remind you that I haven’t run out of my ability to choke you out just because we aren’t in combat.”

Hazel wiped away her tears with sharp motions, then managed to get to her feet. “We’re taking his body home. But… let’s finish this. Nacho, how did you know? How could you possibly know that Crave would mess up the puzzle? If he had gotten that weapon, and he was Tier two… there was nothing you could have done to stop him from becoming the ruling tyrant of humanity. That was a huge risk, unless you knew he’d get it wrong.”

Nacho could only point to the skewers. “Those changed when I entered the room the first time. I think the whole puzzle hinged upon what kind of player reached the door first. I’m a Satiation Player, and I believe I have the right recipe to whip up a solution for getting into that room. Besides, cloak, feather, and sword? That’s a bad combo; you’re basically begging to get backstabbed.”

Hazel sniffled and nodded, trying to put on a brave face. “You better go and win that spear.”

“Uh, we’ll stay out here, bucko.” Abby forced a smile, though it looked ghastly.

Eduardo was silent, likely still getting over the shock of being bisected and coming back from it without any issue. Reuben locked arms with Nacho and started skipping. “It’s you and me, buddy. If you get shish-kabobed, I get shish-kabobed.”

“Brie makes it three.” The Berserker escorted them into the room with far less cheer than Reuben managed. “At least if we get it wrong, we’ll be fancy cheeses.”

“What? I don’t-” Reuben started, only for Brie to shake her head and gesture forward.

“Fancy cheeses are served on toothpicks, right?”

“You… you were making a joke!” Reuben pushed Nacho out of the way and swept her into a hug, tossing her back and forth. “Even when this could go horribly wrong? I knew I loved you!”

Nacho took a few moments to scoop some of Crave’s corpse-sludge out of the way, just enough that he wouldn’t step in it while moving the huge circles. Reuben bravely reached into the mess and retrieved Crave’s Sleeping Feather in what was left of its holster from under the dead guy’s arm. “Look at this! How did it survive that barrage? This is way too powerful to just leave laying around-”

The Sleeping Feather burst into flames, and Reuben tossed it with a yelp of surprise. The feather turned to ashes before it hit the stone floor, and the Healer seemed utterly crestfallen. Nacho tried to make his friend feel better. “At least you got a free upgrade on your Ring of Cheese.”

Reuben sighed and rolled his shoulders. “The Patrons giveth, and the Patrons taketh away.”

The rest of the Brunch Force used the wait to collect and divide up the magic items of the Final Victory that had popped out of Storage Slots. While his friends looted the bodies, Nacho got out his Aria. He leafed hurriedly through the pages full of intricate writing until he found the recipe. “This was a drop from Hana Banana. But even without this, I would’ve already thought that the chicken wing, the honeycomb, and the bottle of hot sauce symbols would’ve matched me. I just wouldn’t have known what order to set them up in.”

Nacho swallowed hard, a sudden thought shaking his confidence. His two best friends, who—in his mind—he had been sent through time to save, had almost not survived the first serious ambush they had found themselves in. His leadership, or lack thereof, had nearly cost him everything. A handful of lives had already been lost because of him, but if he ever needed to add those two to the list…

He shook off the intrusive thoughts and sucked in a deep breath. “We survived. We made it. Don't borrow trouble that doesn't exist.”

Nacho focused on the door, turning the top circle to the chicken wing, the next circle to the honeycomb, and then the final one to the bottle of hot sauce. Hoping that he was right, he inserted the Ivory Talon into the lock. He felt himself sweating lightly. If he got even one wrong, he’d wind up on the floor with Crave and the gang. “The only positive thing is: if I got it wrong… I'll never know! Ha…”

Taye called from the archway. “We believe in you completely, Nacho! You got this!”

“Completely, eh? I notice that you’re not stepping into the room, bucko,” Abby gruffly pointed out.

The Archer’s cheeks turned as pink as Kristie’s hair. “Someone has to stay alive—I mean, if anything bad happens to Nacho. Which shouldn’t happen. Because, you know, he’s awesome.”

Reuben loudly gave Nacho a command. “Come on, dude. Just turn that talon clockwise, and it’s ‘winner, winner, chicken dinner’. Dra~agon Spear. Dragon Spear. Dragon Spear!”

The others took up the chant as Reuben built up the tension. Even Kala raised an armored thumb. Nacho couldn't hold back for a single second after that, turning the key, hearing the door *click*, and bracing for pain. Instead… the symbols glowed and the entire door radiated energy before swinging open noiselessly.

“We did—*bleh*!” Nacho immediately clutched his nose as a smell hit him, the perfume of a porta potty after an August weekend at Lake Alcoholism.

Reuben grunted in actual pain. “Oh, celestials. I think we found what puts the ‘cess’ in ‘cesspit’.”

Brie was silent for a beat, then slammed on her helmet to hide her face. “If there’s a dragon with food poisoning in there, I’m Combat Dashing the other way. Just saying… I will not be fighting anything that the Patrons came up with that is involved in a potty humor pun.”

“Noted.” Nacho summoned his glowing potstickers and sent them buzzing into the darkness beyond the door. A room made from crumbling red brick slowly grew more visible. It wasn’t very big, and the interior was rather plain. A layer of smelly dirt covered the floor. Inside the center of the small chamber sat a cylinder, about five feet wide, eight feet long, and six feet tall. The smell seemed to be emitting from the cylinder, judging by the practically cartoonish waves of stink wafting in the air above it.

The cylinder bore no other embellishment than a hatch, hinges, and a handle.

Nacho crunched across the pungent, coarse dirt and took hold of the handle, steeling himself before wrenching it open.

The smell worsened considerably. Inside the plain metal box lay a thick layer of muck, but floating above the black filth was a Spear, rotating slightly in midair. The shaft had been crafted from a beautiful red-tinged wood, polished to a bright mahogany. Glowing golden filigree ran the length of the wood, and the spearhead was a dark sanguine metal—almost black—outlined in gold.

After how clean the dungeon had been, the crumbling brick, the nasty dirt, and the old-Earth metal cylinder seemed completely out of place. Even more disorienting was the fact that there were no heroic statues, nor any statues at all; just metal and murk. Abby eventually crossed the room, along with Kala, Kristie, and Taye. Eduardo and Hazel had stayed with Hank’s body, which Nacho agreed was appropriate.

Abby poked at the spear with her staff. “That right there is a septic tank. Probably suitable for a small house with only a couple of people. That’s old technology, too. They’re doing amazing things with septic tanks, or they were, back on Earth. Leech fields, floats, valves—your basic eco-friendly wastewater management system.”

Nacho had no idea how they were going to get that Dragon Spear out of the septic tank. There was absolutely no way he was going to crawl into that death trap. Charlie eased forward with a length of rope, already tying a knot. “Here. We can, you know, grab it with this. Rope is super useful. You guys aren’t going to kill me… I’m helpful, right?”

“Charlie is the man!” Reuben strode forward and slapped the guy on the back. “Look at this old-school gamer with fifty feet of rope. Also, no, you’re totally free to go. We wouldn’t have hurt you either way; that’s not our jam.”

Charlie handed the rope to Nacho with shaking hands, clearly not trusting Reuben fully. The cook tossed the makeshift lariat over the spearhead and eased the rope behind the spearhead before pulling it taut on the shaft. Although the spear was floating above the muck and had not been embedded in the grossness, it somehow still felt like pulling a stick out of sludge,

Nacho drew the spear out of the septic tank inch by inch, then carefully grabbed it.

The minute he touched the wood, the System went crazy.

Greetings, All Players Everywhere in the AKC!

The Dragon Spear has been found! Yes, the Dragon Spear has been claimed by none other than Eli ‘Nacho’ Naches, leader of the Chips Guild. He has won the hearts and minds of so many, and not only do we think that the Sunrise Brigade is going to join the Chips during their Guild Master’s tenure, but the Final Victory Guild is now his to command!

Congratulations, big winner! Everyone else lost, and their wager is now yours. As we promised , winner take all!

The messages didn’t end there, turning slightly more ominous.

Listen up people! Nacho and the Chips Guild are the big winners. That means no more mark of the Scarlet Symbol of Accusatory Trespassing for those who invaded the inner sanctum without the Ivory Talon. Now, that’s enough about that! No more special attention where we tell everyone how amazing you’re doing.

You get the bonus points for finding the KC Cesspit’s inner sanctum, stinky friends! That’s five thousand credits for finding the smelly sanctum and surviving. Nacho brought nine friends with him—Reuben, Brie, Kala, Charles, Hazel, Eduardo, Taye, Kristie, and Abigail! That’s an additional forty-five thousand credits!

We’ll also throw in an extra 50K of credits for an even 100K. Just kidding! We’re only giving you your thousand-person guild bonus since The Final Victory guild submitted to your rule while we were sending this. Calculating everything out, the Chips guild has a total windfall of… 550,000 credits after all bets are also accounted for!

Minor note (and you really shouldn’t worry about this too much): you’ve put yourselves on the CrossHumans’ radar in a big way. Their entire planet now knows that the place to be on your Starter World is the AKC. It’s not London. It’s not France. It’s not in Thailand’s underpants! It’s right there!

Good luck fighting the CrossHumans!

Arriodd has his sword, but you have the spear. That’s good, right?

May your futures be delicious.

The massive influx of credits was excellent, but the surprises didn’t end there. As he watched on in growing horror, the spear in his hands fell apart… collapsing into a dozen metal skewers with polished wooden ends. Shape-wise, they were identical to the skewers that had killed Crave, only about five times as long.

“Yes! We didn’t win one lousy Dragon Spear!” Reuben raised a fist and whooped. “We won a dozen Sewer Skewers!”

A new System message flashed across Nacho’s field of vision.

Sewer Skewers? Love that name; we updated the item from ‘Dragon Skewers’ to ‘Sewer Skewers’! What can the Sewer Skewers do? Let us get out the bullet points! Boom.

Each skewer:

• Is a Tierless Weapon that anyone can use—as long as that ‘anyone’ is a Satiation Player.
• Will hit any monster, of any Tier, regardless of their Putrid Mana protection.
• Does a base damage of 25 Health Points in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. These are not easy weapons to wield. They are skewers, not spears. There’s a reason ancient warriors used Javelins and not cooking utensils in battle.
• So long as you have at least one of the Skewers in your possession and you are registered as their owner, you can recall all of them over the course of a minute at the cost of half your Mana pool.
• For every Sewer Skewer embedded in a single enemy, deal 10% additional damage with remaining Sewer Skewers.
• Will cook up something really scrumptious… fifty percent of the time. They work one hundred percent of the time to cook meat well. If we need to state it in plain language: half the time, the meal will be upgraded by one Rarity level. NOTE: Results may vary wildly based on the skill of the Satiation Player. Trash is still trash.
• Releases a constant fume that attracts rats of all Tiers when in range. This is the weapon that has cooked their genus for all of human’s history, and they hold a grudge.
• Deals 100% more damage to all Tiers of Rats.

Nacho wasn’t sure what all of the details meant, but he’d figure it out later. What he did understand was already amazing enough, especially the ability to automatically increase the Rarity of whatever he was cooking. Being able to create Epic food would allow him to provide another stack of buffs when people ate it. “These are great for me, but it says they might attract rats?”

“I mean… okay? I’m kinda shuddering at the thought of seeing rats every time I’m around you, but I can manage,” Brie stated as they prepared to leave.

All of them were hoping that it would be smooth sailing through the KC Sewers. Without the Scarlet Symbol of Accusatory Trespassing, they would no longer have every monster around gunning for them. They’d finish plundering the bodies of the Final Victory, make preparations for their own dead, and then hightail it out of there.

Nacho fished the skewers out of what he kept calling ‘mud’ that covered the ground. It wasn't mud. Taking a deep breath, he promised himself that he was going to buy some Epic industrial-strength soap and clean them an embarrassing number of times in boiling water before ever using them to cook.

Weapons collected, enemies defeated, Health and Mana at full, the heartsore yet triumphant group started toward home.

One last thing before you leave the cesspit, Player! A fun little surprise we’ve been keeping back: the monsters of this dungeon!

They got as far as the archway to the pre-sanctum before sounds began echoing through the tunnels of the cesspit. Scratching, squeaking, a multitude of monsters closing in on their location. Reuben eyed Nacho sideways, shaking his head as he gestured at the new weapons. “Might attract ‘some’ rats, huh? You know Brie will make you pay for this.”

“That's what it says!” Nacho defensively held his skewers closer, trying to figure out a better way of carrying them around than simply wearing a jingling stack of sharpened metal rods on his belt. He settled on keeping them in a Storage Slot, though it felt like a waste if he’d have to abandon the meat that was being stored there.

“At least you’ll get some practice with the new weapons,” Brie stated reluctantly.

Her observation gave Nacho pause, and he stared down at the unwieldy weapons, then recalled his heavily boosted Fitness stat. “That’s a good point. I do need some practice. Give me some space, and only help me if I really need it.”

“What are you…?” Reuben called nervously, his thought trailing off as Nacho launched forward and took the fight to the incoming dungeon monsters.

The cook braced a skewer in each hand, and only his practice in dealing with horrible situations allowed him to keep his grip on them as the dungeon monsters came into view. Not a single one of the creatures was below Tier one, but luckily, he only found a single one of them at Tier two, and it was waiting at the back of the wave of monsters, its beady little eyes locked on him in patient hunting mode.

Every moment of the ensuing battle was brutal, and Nacho was forced to rely on his inflated stats to bull his way through the murderous rodents. He attempted to fight with his usual finesse, but slashing attacks simply didn’t work with this type of weapon, and he was forced to readjust his strategy time and again.

He found that the weapons worked extremely well as rapiers, insofar as parrying and reducing damage, while keeping his enemies at a distance. In terms of actually using them as a tool to implement pain, he found that they resembled punch daggers. The grip was a little wrong, but so long as he could maintain his angle of attack, they entered flesh in a very similar way. As soon as he was able to associate his new weapons with ones that he was fairly proficient with, the tide of the battle turned nearly instantly.

In the first wave, he had been pushed back relentlessly, but now he was dancing around the corridor, slamming skewers into bodies, then pulling fresh ones out of his Storage Slots without slowing down even slightly. When he was down to a single skewer, he whirled around and slapped a level seventeen rat in the face with his cast iron pan—before jamming the sharpened rod into its body and leaving it there. “Hold on to that for a moment for me, would you?”

Jumping backward and using the momentum to tuck into a barrel roll, Nacho sprang into wild motion, racing to his defeated enemies and pulling skewers out until he had collected what he considered to be enough of them. His hands full, he sprang back to the still-alive, still-furious rat that was waiting for him, and started poking it with his skewers until it finally succumbed to its wounds.

“I'm going to cook you after I win-” Breathing heavily, but only from sheer adrenaline, Nacho stared down at the Tier two rat and prepared himself mentally. It was going to be the first time that he was taking on a creature this strong by himself, let alone expecting to win. Fully psyched up, he cried out his nearly sinister taunt, “-so I get to taste victory twice!”